


put my heart on my chest [so that you can see it too]

by pagan_mint



Category: Covert Affairs
Genre: "idk wtf I am help" Jai, Auggie and Jai as the Annie Walker Defense Squad, Blood, Cool Mom Joan, Date Rape Drug/Roofies, F/M, Gay Bar, Gen, Guns, M/M, Oh No He's Hot, Spies & Secret Agents, Spy Squad OT3, bisexual Auggie, het/aro Annie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 06:42:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7424119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagan_mint/pseuds/pagan_mint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes you don't realize what's most precious to you until they both flirt with you for months and finally tell you while you're in the hospital, drugged up to your eyeballs</p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>“So… you like Auggie, and Auggie likes you. But you both… also like… me?”</p><p>“Maybe we should revisit this when he’s not doped up,” Annie murmurs, her voice tinged with concern. Jai tries to sneer, but he’s not even sure if he’s moving his mouth.</p><p>“I’m fine. It’s just.” It’s probably too late to backtrack now, but he tries. “I’m not gay.”</p><p>Auggie <i>beams</i>, the kind of smile Jai has watched him give Annie at their table in the tavern, the kind of smile he’s now distantly realizing he desperately wanted to be on the receiving end of himself.</p><p>“Neither am I,” Auggie says cheerfully.</p>
            </blockquote>





	put my heart on my chest [so that you can see it too]

**Author's Note:**

> how long has this show been out and none of you have written jai/annie/auggie. what are you afraid of, the cia
> 
> *
> 
> Lyrics from "Death of a Bachelor" by Panic! at the Disco! 

The divide between Auggie Anderson, blind ex-field agent, and Jai Wilcox, current field agent too cocky for his own good or that of anyone else, is impossible to cross or repair – until Annie Walker shows up out of the blue and does exactly that. She stitches the gash between them back together with good intentions, witty banter, and persistent acts of heroic but misguided derring-do, forcing Auggie and Jai to work together to keep both her and whoever she's protecting alive. The two men develop a system, unspoken but understood: Auggie does the computer work, Jai does the footwork. When Annie goes missing, the former finds out where she is, and the latter goes to get her. They see each other more and more often, sometimes for work, sometimes not, always for Annie – whether it's planning her surprise birthday party, or determining the identity of an undercover assassin before her life is endangered.

It becomes understood at the tavern that the attractive blonde CIA agent is not to be approached. The rule is unspoken, but not enforced; it doesn’t have to be, not when Auggie is laughing with her at her table and Jai is lurking around the bar, seemingly engrossed in conversation or a game of darts but always conscious of what the other two and the people around them are doing. And then, one day, Auggie goes to the bathroom and Jai is distracted by someone showing him a video on their phone, and someone breaks the rule.

Annie is perfectly capable of taking care of herself, of course, but even the most vigilant CIA agent doesn’t expect someone to slip a date rape drug into her drink at a bar full of other CIA agents. Jai notices her absence when he glances over and she’s gone; at first he thinks nothing of it, ignoring the sudden feeling of sick unease that curls into his stomach. Then he sees Auggie return to their table and pick something up, and it’s her abandoned phone, and Jai is across the bar and out the door in time to see a stranger forcing a clearly intoxicated Annie into the back of a sedan.

Auggie knew, because somehow he always knows, and it takes him using his “Joan left me in charge” voice for Jai to stop hitting the man. By the time the police and the paramedics finally arrive, Annie is barely conscious, sitting between the two of them on the curb and almost entirely collapsed into Auggie. Jai is stiff on her other side, angry at the man he’s trussed up with his tie and furious at himself for not doing more – and then Annie’s hand is on his sleeve, tugging at it like she’s a small child trying to get his attention, and she slurs “ ‘S not your fault – Aug, tell him ‘s not his f – ffff…”

Auggie adjusts the way he’s sitting as she passes out entirely, so that her head can fall from his shoulder onto his chest rather than into his lap. He doesn’t tell Jai that it’s not his fault, but he does say “thanks” in a voice tight with something that Jai initially identifies as jealousy but is surprised a heartbeat later to recognize as genuine gratitude.

They don’t talk about the incident again after that, except for one joking comment from Annie a few weeks later about how guys never hit on her at the tavern anymore. Auggie makes a dry comment about her makeup being too heavy, and Jai grins and asks what she wants to drink. The bartender gives it to him for free. “It’s for your girlfriend, right?”

The spy doesn’t correct him.

*

Their target of the week frequents a popular gay club, and Jai is trying to formulate a believable reason why he can’t be their undercover operative when someone speaks before he can.

“I’ve been there,” Auggie drawls, his voice the kind of casual that Jai is keenly aware means he’s saying something very important. “They know me, but not what I do for a living. I can be the plant.”

“There’s no way you’re gay,” Annie blurts, and then flushes wildly as she realizes she said the words aloud. “I mean – uh – I’ve never seen you – ”

“There are people in this world capable of appreciating both genders,” Auggie informs her, his lips quirking up in the half-smile that indicates fond amusement on his part. “I happen to be one of them.”

“It’s too dangerous for you to go in alone,” says Joan, who either knew or has no opinions on the sex lives of her operatives. Or both; after all, she has plenty of other things to worry about. “Annie can keep an eye on you from outside the club, but we’ll need someone on the inside.”

“No,” Jai says immediately, but he’s not sure if the vehemence in the word is because he’s confident in his sexual orientation or because he isn’t. Either way, he’s not eager to find out.

“Unfortunately, you’re not in a position where I have to listen to you when you say that,” Joan responds blandly. “Not yet. Have fun being a bartender.”

Jai does not have fun being a bartender. The club is loud and dark, any visibility that the strobing ceiling lights might otherwise offer obscured by the DJ’s fog machine. Keeping an eye on Auggie under such circumstances proves difficult, especially when the other agent constantly distracted by mixing drinks, fending off almost incessant flirtation, and whatever the hell Auggie is doing with his hips when Jai _does_ catch a glimpse of him. It hardly helps that as good as the younger man looks in business casual, he looks even better in a snug-fitting V-neck tee and skinny jeans.

The night ends with Jai pinning him against an alley wall behind the club, shielding Auggie’s body with his own as he engages in a shootout with their target. It’s a heated exchange, and Jai is laser-focused on the current threat, but it’s still difficult for him to tune out his immediate surroundings in order to do so: namely, the way he can feel every frantic pound of Auggie’s heart against his forearm as it pins the smaller man to the wall, the hitching of Auggie's breath with every other gunshot, the cry Auggie gives in response to Jai’s when the target gets lucky and nails him in the thigh.

The field agent is distantly aware, through the blaze of pain consuming his senses, that Auggie takes his gun away from him and fires a shot off over his shoulder. Silence falls, abrupt and ominous; then Jai can hear, with perfect clarity, Annie yelling from the far end of the alley.

“Auggie?! I can’t believe you hit him! You could have shot me!”

“I would never shoot you,” Auggie calls overhead, and then he’s on his knees on the lumpy alley street with his fingers ghosting over Jai’s face, carding up into thick dark hair. “Talk to me, big fella.”

Jai is delirious with pain – or maybe blood loss, since he can’t really feel a lot. The single dim street light in the alley is flickering, and with it his awareness of the situation and surroundings. The only thing he can really focus on is Auggie – his fingers, his voice, the concern rolling off of him and crashing into Jai like ocean surf into a cliff face.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he manages vaguely. “ ‘Cause if I talk to you I might tell you I have a crush on you, and that – that’d be, uh, embarrassing. Make for an – er – a tense work environment.”

When he wakes up in the hospital, the first person he sees isn’t his father, or Joan, or even Auggie. It’s Annie, who drops her book and tears her earbuds out the second she sees that his eyes are open, comes to perch on the edge of his bed and ask if he’s okay before not-so-subtly asking what he remembers. Still pretty drugged up, Jai blinks at her slowly, starts to say “Nothing” – and then Auggie walks into the room, wearing a rumpled sweater and holding two paper cups of coffee and looking delighted to see him awake, and Jai very abruptly remembers Everything.

“For a spy, you have a crappy poker face,” Annie giggles, and Auggie laughs too, handing her one of the coffees as he sits down on the opposite side of Jai’s bed.

“Hey,” he says gently, “it’s okay. I like you too.”

Jai’s been a spy for long enough to know that he’s not getting out of or around talking about this. “I thought you liked Annie,” he mutters. Auggie shrugs, very nearly spilling coffee onto the field agent’s pristine hospital sheets.

“I do. And she likes me. Unlike you, we talk about our feelings.”

Silence falls. Jai falls with it, letting it drag past him like wind during a skydive, letting the drugs that are slowly pulsing into his veins pull him away from the situation.

“ _Auggie_ ,” Annie snaps, and the blind man chuckles.

“You’re the one who came up with the idea,” he responds, and Annie sighs and then she’s talking all in a rush. It’s too fast and Jai can’t quite keep up with every word she says, but when she finally finishes he waits for a moment and then tries to recap, his voice pushing slow and heavy past the painkillers.

“So… you like Auggie, and Auggie likes you. But you both… also like… me?”

“Maybe we should revisit this when he’s not doped up,” Annie murmurs, her voice tinged with concern. Jai tries to sneer, but he’s not even sure if he’s moving his mouth.

“I’m fine. It’s just.” It’s probably too late to backtrack now, but he tries. “I’m not gay.”

Auggie _beams_ , the kind of smile Jai has watched him give Annie at their table in the tavern, the kind of smile he’s now distantly realizing he desperately wanted to be on the receiving end of himself.

“Neither am I,” Auggie says cheerfully.

*

It works, in a way it might not have worked otherwise. It takes Jai a while to sort out their dynamic, and Auggie even offers to make him a chart, but he figures it out in the end.

Auggie and Annie remain friends, because it turns out that’s what they meant by “we like each other.” The former doesn’t stop accepting the advances of beautiful women in bars, and the latter remains politely distant when romantically approached. It takes a quick Google search for Jai to learn what “aromantic” means, and a little more research to understand it, and when he does he feels like he has even more questions than when he started.

“Well,” Annie explains patiently, “I like you, and I like Auggie, but not like that. But you like _me_ , and you like _Auggie_ , and Auggie likes _you_ , and I like – well, I like that we all like each other. It doesn’t have to be in the same ways.”

“Auggie doesn’t like me,” Jai grates, still in denial, and then he jumps and spins around when a hand swats his ass.

“Had to play hard-to-get,” Auggie purrs. “You’re a pretty big fish. Had to give the line some slack before I reeled you in.”

“That’s a dumb analogy – ” Jai begins, and doesn’t get to finish because the blind man somehow knows exactly where his lips are and presses his own directly to them. It’s their first kiss, and Jai opens his mouth against Auggie’s in surprise, which just gives the younger man the flexibility he needs to deepen the kiss.

When they finally break apart, Jai staggers back, and Annie snickers.

“Is he good?” she asks, and Auggie shrugs, gestures her towards the darker man.

“Why don’t you find out?” he tells her. “You’re aro, not ace. One kiss won't hurt.”

"It sure won't," Annie agrees, and before Jai can get a word in edgewise, his lips are being otherwise occupied.

*

Joan doesn’t figure it out for a good long while. They are, after all, professional adults – and what’s more, they work for the CIA, so it’s not like they can’t keep a secret.

It’s Jai who ultimately gives it away, when Annie and Auggie are taken prisoner and tortured and he uses what is deemed “unnecessary force and violence” in a foreign territory to ensure their safe return. Joan lectures him for an hour about procedure, about politics, about how she expected better from him – and then she says “if you had gone through the proper channels,” and Jai lifts his head and looks her in the eyes and tells her “the proper channels take too long” and she stops.

“Oh,” she says, and then “ _Oh_ ,” and then she paces for a moment before huffing “at least you’re discreet” and sending him out of her office.

Jai shares this endorsement with Annie and Auggie later, and Auggie smiles that damn smile again.

“Lead CIA field agent praised for being discreet,” he says, in a news-headliner voice. “Something to put on your resume when they eventually fire you. Did you really _blow up_ their cocaine storage facility?”

“I drove a tanker truck into it,” Jai evades. “The truck is what blew up. While admittedly helpful, the explosion was not part of my plan.”

“Did you even have a plan?” Annie snorts, tossing back the rest of her drink. Jai looks at the flowering bruise on her cheekbone, glances at the slowly fading redness around Auggie’s wrists where he tried to get out of the handcuffs, and doesn’t respond for a long moment because he honestly doesn’t know.

“I just wanted you back,” he says finally. “Both of you.”

“You might regret getting us back,” Auggie smirks at him. “Come on, let’s play some darts. I win, you buy the next round of drinks.”

“This seems unfair,” Jai responds drily, but he follows Auggie to the boards, and is soundly thrashed, and buys the drinks without a second thought.

It’s a strange feeling, to want something that you already have. And maybe one day he will get fired, because if anyone ever takes it away from him again, he can’t promise that he won’t blow up another tanker truck. Maybe two, he thinks, stealing a sip from Annie’s beer before she catches him at it and swats him away. Just to give Auggie something to smile at him about again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave a kudos and comment if you enjoyed <3


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